


Chronoscopic Probabilistic Law

by blasted0glass



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22643011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasted0glass/pseuds/blasted0glass
Summary: There is a device that can see any part of the past.
Kudos: 2





	Chronoscopic Probabilistic Law

“What are you doing?”

“Maintenance. I’ve got to make sure this thing keeps working.” He tinkered with the chronoscope as he talked, digging around inside a panel beneath a glowing screen. “Intentionally disabling one of these things is illegal, did you know?”

“I did not. Well, I appreciate you bringing me here to see this one.” I was actually of two minds about it, but I had to maintain the facade.

“Of course. We won’t be able to look at just anything we want, though.”

“The privacy act of 2041.”

“That’s right.”

“Something like the Gettysburg address would be fair game though?”

“Of course. That occurred in public. But you’ve undoubtedly already seen that one.”

I forced a laugh. “True.”

“At any rate, I need to concentrate. It would be unfortunate to break this thing while trying to do maintenance.”

“I’ll leave you to it.” He’d have to put us out of the chronoscope’s reach so we could talk freely. I didn’t understand how this was going to help, but I had to act unconcerned about it.

Chronoscopes view any time and place within the past light cone; disabling this one here wasn’t going to help us at all, because the one in the next room would still work. Or this one would work tomorrow. Someone could always be watching our conversation from some future point in time. As chronoscopes got cheaper that would become more likely. Infinitely many people could be watching us right now. What an audience.

I hated always having them in the back of my mind.

And yet his carefully-worded, plausible-deniability hints had brought us here. He must have had some sort of trick. Very rarely, the chronoscope had been unable to solve a crime. Maybe it had something to do with that.

“So, what do you want to view first?”

“I was thinking dinosaurs. Surely there aren’t--”

“Nevermind that,” he said, his tone dark. He stood up, a connector of some kind in his hand. “Finally. We aren’t being watched now.”

“I take it you’ve disabled it. What are you holding?”

“The quantum off-switch.”

“Is it off?” It didn’t look off. It continued to emit blue light; the screen was still displaying the default view, a time and place with the security company’s logo.

“No. It’s on, and cannot be turned off. That’s how I know we’re safe.” My hair stood on end. Was he insane? But no, there was no way you could be insane and still engage in this level of subterfuge.

“I don’t understand.”

“The chronoscope interferes with itself. If someone tries to view this room, they’ll get only static.”

“Oh. But I still don’t understand. If it interferes, weren’t we safe from the start?”

“No. There was a chance the machine was off.”

“But it was on.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. What good is removing the switch? If I go to prison because of you...” Shit. Perhaps I should have kept playing dumb.

“The off-switch makes the chronoscope shut off in some number of quantum futures. Four percent, in fact.” That explained why he was always joking about having a random day off each month. His chronoscope would shut off 1/25th of the time--though not for a day straight, I supposed. He continued: “The past of this room can still be viewed, as long as in four percent of pasts the chronoscope is disabled. In fact, the chronoscope detects all pasts with a measure of four percent or greater.”

“Wait…. Now you’re really not making sense. Using a quantum random number generator to affect the future is fine; in four percent of futures, the chronoscope would shut off. But the past is the past. Quantum mechanics predicts we have multiple futures, but we ultimately end up in one. There’s only one worldline we follow.”

“I’m not mistaken.” He met my eyes, a somber expression on his face. “That’s the secret I was hinting at. There are multiple branches in our future, and multiple roots in our past.”

“Multiple pasts… but, wait... that means...”

“It means that the company’s been sending innocent people to prison, as though their guilt were certain. With a probability of up to four percent.”

“Oh my God.”

“Now you see why we have to stop them.”


End file.
